Among conservative theologians, no other has understood so well or written so extensively about the man whom many consider to be the top theological mind of the twentieth century. This book is particularly useful for those in the Reformed and Presbyterian community that want to gain a better understanding of Barth and his impact on the modern church. Such an understanding is vitally important for those who hold to the Reformed faith, as Barth more than any other contributed specifically to the modernization movement that dramatically altered the face of the reformed churches in America in the early part of this century.

Like most of Van Til's work, the book is somewhat technical and difficult at points to comprehend, but the small amount of effort expended in comprehending this work will yield a substantially greater understanding and appreciation for it in the end.

This title is NOT easy reading, but it is a title which will give a lot of material to consider. Excellent, excellent, even if you disagree with Van Til, it is excellent.

As a seeker of the faith, I often read books that grasp the Aquinas type of theology. That is, books that support the Cosmological, Teleological, and Ontological argument for the existence of God. But in so using these arguments, one must be neutral in their approach. Is it indeed MORAL to be neutral in your apologetical approach? Read the book? Is the existence of God probable in which so many evidential apologist say it is? Read the book. Is Van Til's approach fideistic? Read the book. Is Natural Theology Biblical? Read the book.

Christian, if you are serious about apologetics, then you have to get this book! It's worth every penny.

Dr. Bahnsen is the best defender and debater on this apologetic. I recommend that you listen to his debate with Dr. Gordon Stein.

1. An Introduction to Van Til's Apologetic. This chapter includes a personal testimony of Van Til.

2. The Task of Apologetics. This chapter encompasses the need for apologetics and how it actual relates to evangelism as well as philosophy.

3. A simple Summary and Illustration. Bahnsen describes the conflict between final authorities, worldviews, and the presuppositions of the unbeliever.

4. The Epistemological Side of Apologetics. Deals with the epistemology of Van Til and his method

5. The apologetical Side of Epistemology. Gives a defense of the presuppositional epistemological method

6. The Psychological Complexities of Unbelief.

7. The presuppositional Apologetical Argument.

8. Comparisons and Criticisms of Apologetical Methodology.

9. Conclusion/Summary.

Even if you do not hold to the Van Tillian method, this book is still a great text to read to gain a better understanding of what Van Til taught and held to (presuppositionalism). We should all be grateful to Bahnsen for providing us with this wonderful work as his last (he died shortly after finishing the manuscript).

Other reviewers have done a good job of laying out the format of the book, so I will not repeat it here. I just wanted to include a few words of recommendation for this tremendous and timeless work by one of God's servants who is greatly missed.

Cornelius Van Til is acclaimed by many in the Reformed community as the most important thinker since Calvin. Frame shares this opinion, while noting some of the weaknesses of Van Til's thought and writing style. For those who don't know, Van Til was a Christian apologist who developed a system called presuppositionalism. While it's hard to describe briefly, its central claim is that one must presuppose the truth of Scripture and challenge the unbeliever by showing that his beliefs are inconsistent with his presuppositions. The unbeliever cannot justify his own beliefs apart from the existence of a theistic universe. Hence, only Christianity can be shown to meet "every legitimate demand of reason." Van Til didn't reject the use of evidence in apologetics, but instead thought that evidences must be presented in a manner consistent with the presuppositional apologetics (This concept isn't exactly clear to me, even after reading Prof. Frame's chapter a few times.)

Van Til is hard to understand. First of all, his books aren't well organized. Second, he writes in such a way as to exaggerate the differences between his thought and other thinkers, and the differences between believers and unbelievers. If you take some of his ideas literally, Van Til appears to say that unbelievers don't know anything and there are no similarities between Christian and non-Christian philosophies.

As an aside, Frame's approach to Van Til is somewhat controversial within the Van Til movement. Frame believes that once Van Til's thought is stripped of some of its more extreme statements, his apologetics isn't all that different from other apologetic systems. Second, he disagrees with Van Til on a number of issues. After you read this book, read the late Greg Bahnsen's excellent "Van Til's Apologetics," which contains excerpts from Van Til's works along with Bahnsen's comments. Bahsen was a more consistent Van Tillian than Frame.

"Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of his Thought" also includes a short biography of Van Til and a brief history of the Van Tillian movement. It includes a little too much of John Frame's biography interspersed in the text.. We really don't need to read an excerpt from Prof. Frame's seminary paper presented to Van Til. This is a minor point in an otherwise excellent book.

White rightly realizes the enormous challenge that postmodernism presents to Christianity, especially its Evangelical stream. Post-foundationalist thought tends to challenge not only objectivity in man's grasping and appropriation of truth, but even the very ontological reality of truth. While even so hardened a relativist as Richard Rorty admits the self-defeating nature of such a claim, it continues to garner support from many sectors of philosophy. White helpfully draws a clear distinction between the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of. This is his book's major contribution to the debate. He concludes that the metaphysical and ontological reality of truth as it is expressed in the traditional correspondence theory of truth is basic to Christian theology, indeed to all thought. The epistemological aspect of truth is a bit more problematic, though, as debate soon becomes mired in debates over epistemic justification, the nature of starting points, evidentialism vs. presuppositionalism, etc.

White provides incisive critiques of the five major thinker's systems. He appropriately questions Van Til's jihad against univocity, his attendant rejection of the necessity of the law of contradiction, and his claims that his system provided objective certainty and absolute proof for Christian theism.

The chapter on Schaeffer is rather well done. Schaeffer's shortcomings as a philosopher and historian (he claimed only to be a simple evangelist) are discussed. The best portion of the chapter deals with Schaeffer's failure to provide positive proof for Christianity. He failed to realize that disproving atheistic nihilism does equal proving Biblical Christianity. Schaeffer also tended to stress the pragmatic aspect of truth-claims, asserting that a worldview could not be true if it did not explain the 'mannishness of man,' not realizing that his values existed within his worldview and thus could not be a criterion for choosing a worldview.

Carl Henry likewise placed too much faith in the power of rational argumentation to prove the truth of Christianity. Henry is to be credited, though, for championing the universality of logic, and the propositional nature of reality and Scripture.

Millard Erickson is one Evangelical who has engaged in serious dialogue with postmodernism and post-liberal theology. He has attempted a synthesis which preserves the historic orthodoxy of the Reformation while incorporating the insights of recent trends in theology, including existentialism, structuralism, and narrative theology. While his synthesis tends more toward the former tradition than the latter, he has nonetheless been influenced by contemporary thought more than other thinkers. This influence is evident in his nuanced formulation of inerrancy, his emphasis on personal revelation, his coalition with evidentialism and its emphasis on empirical verification, and his openness toward progressive hermeneutical methods.

The last thinker examined, Donald Bloesch, can hardly be classed an Evangelical. He is a Barthian through and through. He embraces the dialectical theology of the neo-orthodox irrationalists and vitiates the doctrine of the authority of Scripture. Positively, though, he steers Evangelicals toward an appreciation of the theological implications of the Incarnation, as well as the concept of revelation as an event as well as a body of truth. Furthermore, his rejection of autonomous philosophy is a strong antidote to the Enlightenment strands in Evangelical thought.

White's book is well worth reading. White provides a good overview of the concept of truth in the thought of the thinkers he covers. I do have some gripes, though. First, numerous misspellings and typos mar the text. Second, White makes the same mistake he accuses most thinkers of making: that of confuting the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of truth. He does this when he asserts a dichotomy between the correspondence and coherence theories of truth. He wrongly portrays the latter as an ontological description of truth. Coherence and correspondence cannot be so easily dichotomized. Coherence proponents such as Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til believed in the ultimate unity of the two. Truth corresponds to the mind of God, which is completely coherent. Third, the book contains no index! Fourth, the selection of Van Til, Schaeffer, Henry, Bloesch, and Erickson is questionable. The issue is primarily philosophical. I would have selected Van Til, Gordon Clark, Arthur Holmes, Alvin Plantinga, and Norman Geisler.

Despite my being a biased Van Tillian, I did not really like this book. I don't believe that it is a particularly bad book either. It is just on my not loved and not hated list. Here's why. Van Til likes to use a lot of clever illustrations to indicate the nature certain themes (for instance, the analogy of the saw and how the natural man interprets reality using reason). The problem is, he does not ever lay out in great detail how this works. It might have been better if Van Til lived more recently and wrote as an analytic philosopher. In any case, take for intance this issue. For Van Til, the possibility of predication and intelligibility rests upon the ontological Trinity. He asserts this, but does he go into any detail as to *why* this is the case? Not in this book. So, this I found to be disappointing. He may be right, but I could see evidentialists scratching their heads asking exactly why that is the case, if it is the case at all. One would need to do reading elsewhere (i.e. the Van Til Archives) in order to see how this claim can be defended. On the other hand, this is only a syllabus and not a bigger work where he deals with some of the questions that popped into my mind elsewhere (i.e. CVT -Defense of the Faith, or see Bahnsen - Van Til's Apologetic, etc.).

Another point. This is about *how* to do apologetics. It is a brief *apologia for revelational presuppositionalism* and not an apologetic for the truth of Christianity. That being said, if you come from a non-Christian perspective, you will wonder about what Van Til is saying when other apologetic works, such as Norman Geisler's, are attempting to argue for Christianity. Again, this book is about the *method* and not an attempt to put the method in practice (see other works such as a Survey of Christian Epistemology where this is done).

So... it is an okay book. A must have for all Van Tillians? Yes. Sufficient for understanding presuppositionalism or vindicating the Christian worldview? Certainly not.